


Helplessness and Other Obstacles

by PeniG



Series: Akashic Records [17]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Children's Literature, Gaslighting, Hurt/Comfort, Nuclear Weapons, Other, Poetry, Technobabble, author has strong opinions on juvenile literature and channels them through Aziraphale, especially for some purposes, kid books are better'n grownup books, no actual science appearing in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-05
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-23 18:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21324967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG
Summary: When Aziraphale is summoned by another angel without notice, Crowley wants to leap into action - but what action is it possible to take?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Akashic Records [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1446628
Comments: 78
Kudos: 277





	1. Scrambling in Soho

**Author's Note:**

> Lines from Homage to Clio by W. H. Auden, published by Random House. Copyright © 1960 W. H. Auden, renewed by the Estate of W. H. Auden.   
Lyrics from "Let It Be Me" Songwriters: Gilbert Becaud / Pierre Delanoe / Manny Curtis © Universal Music Publishing Group; hear the Everyly Brothers sing it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvA-STM7oJk
> 
> I presume everybody with English as a first language recognizes that last line, but for the benefit of others, it's the opening line of that indisputable masterpiece of literature, "Winnie-the-Pooh," by A.A. Milne

Crowley was meeting with the architect concerning the next incarnation of his Mayfair property (working title: Obnoxious Tower) when he felt London’s energy shift like an elevator dropping a foot while the doors were still open. If Aziraphale had planned to leave town, he’d have discussed it with Crowley first, and if he’d left on the 4:50 from Paddington or whatever, he would have departed gradually, not fallen out of residual awareness between one breath and another.

The architect’s voice sounded light-years away. “Mr. Crowley? Are you all right?”

Thinking quickly, he projectile vomited on her shoes. Excusing himself from that point was not difficult. Leaving his briefcase on the table and his hat on the rack, he descended far too many floors far too fast, forcing the lift to ignore everyone else waiting to go down, and within sixty seconds was tearing through London. The Bentley’s radio played “Dead Man’s Curve,” which was not encouraging.

By Soho standards, the bookshop’s corner looked deserted this drizzly afternoon, too early for the pubs, night clubs, and less savory establishments to be open for business. Light shone through the dusty windows, and a British Postal lorry sat at the curb, raising the possibility of collateral damage and _wouldn’t_ Aziraphale be distraught if some disaster of _his_ sucked one of his charges down in his wake? Crowley parked in the alley and let himself in through the back.

The postman inside was first taken aback, then deeply suspicious, and demanded: “Where’s Mr. Fell?”

_No collateral damage._ “How long have you _had_ this route?” Crowley retorted. “Don’t you know any better than to pry into his business?”

“He _got_ me this job when I got clean! But there’s _prying_ and then there’s _tea on the rug_, isn’t there?”

_“Nghch!_” Crowley pushed past him.

No matter how crowded, dusty, and uninviting the rest of the shop got, the round rug under the domed skylight always remained clear. Today it was rucked up, damp with still-warm tea, revealing glimpses of the painted circle underneath, one of Aziraphale’s flowered tea cups rolling on the floor beside it. The circle glowed in Crowley’s eyes. He swore, tasting the air. No hellish auras or residues beyond his own, okay. But entering a circle set to transport to Heaven without proper preparation could discorporate - someone - and a properly prepared Aziraphale_ wouldn’t drop tea_ \- “Did you see anything?”

“Not exactly,” said the postman. “I saw him through the window, got his packages out of the back and brought them in like always and - it’s bad, isn’t it?”

“It might be,” Crowley admitted, twitching the rug to cover the circle. “But this is Fell we’re talking about. I reckon somebody’s in trouble, but we can’t leap to the conclusion that it’s him.” True, as far as it went, despite the sirens screaming in all his nerves.

“So what do we do?”

_We?_ Crowley looked at the postman - an ordinary adult human man, nothing special in his aura, who knew nothing about Heaven or Hell he hadn’t learned in Sunday School, who Sandalphon or Hastur could kill with a casual backhand that didn’t even connect, who knew something mysterious and bad was going on, and was scared about it, who wanted to help Mr. Fell anyway. “Best thing _you_ can do is finish your route and keep your trap shut. I can hold down the fort here. Go on. He didn’t find you that job so you could throw it away.”

The postman’s eyes moved from the teacup, to Crowley’s sunglasses, to his hair. “All right,” he said, confirming a suspicion the demon had harbored for awhile; that the Lore of Mr. Fell included him on some terms or other. If they trusted Mr. Fell they provisionally trusted _him_, and wasn’t _that_ one more thing to be terrified of? “I’ll hope to see him tomorrow.” The postman picked up the cup and set it on the sales counter next to a stack of padded envelopes and a box.

Crowley locked up after him, setting the wards, before miracling the tea out of the rug, pulling it aside without touching it, and examining the calling circle. He didn’t think the power coming off it was strong enough to be a direct Heavenly link; but who _else_ would have called on that line? He could hardly step in himself to find out! Could he? Not without knowing more, dammit - all their millennia of caution would be undone in an instant, if he appeared in Gabriel’s office just when Aziraphale had talked his way out of trouble. He didn’t dare resort to that. Yet.

Crowley stalked every inch of the building, senses on high alert for anything resembling a clue. The small flat off the mezzanine was neat and relatively dust-free, all ready for the next junkie, abused spouse, or evader of England’s less humane laws to find their way through the door in need of a safe haven for the night. The basement kitchen and bathroom smelled of bacon grease and sandalwood, respectively. The back room and shop remained as he’d left them when he’d stopped in a week ago to discuss Arrangements. The till held the usual amount of change. All the workings remained undisturbed, apart from the circle.

Searching turned into restless prowling. Crowley couldn’t see his way forward. Either Aziraphale’d been snatched through the portal to Heaven, and discorporated, or he hadn’t. If the former, Crowley’d never see him again because Gabriel’d have him where he wanted him at last, and that was unbearable, so Crowley decided it couldn’t be true. If the latter, he’d be back - sometime - and Crowley only had to wait.

If Aziraphale could wait decades for Crowley to wake up, Crowley could wait an indeterminate amount of time for Aziraphale to come back. Look after the bookshop for him. Shouldn’t be hard. The place was entirely a front for angelic activity these days. He hadn’t sold a book since the War, when the natural instability of the district had asserted itself in earnest, and now the only books the local market would support were the kind he couldn’t bring himself to peddle.

That didn’t mean he didn’t buy any, and that might be a problem. In addition to his prophecies and misprint Bibles, he’d continued to accumulate new works, though it wasn’t like the old days, when he’d known all literary London, and literary London was the center of the literary universe, so that he had the complete works of everyone of note inscribed by the authors. He had become selective, based on ineffable criteria, sometime while Crowley slept. Modern romance and mystery, poetry and biography and prose, crammed the bedroom shelves, but the only inscribed copies among them were the spy novels Crowley’d had his old not-quite-workmate Fleming sign for “Angel” Fell. Introducing them to each other hadn’t seemed wise on more than one account, so the last truly personal inscriptions, as far as he knew, were from that Wilde fellow. Crowley had no idea how to keep up the collection for him.

No. He'd be back before that mattered. One way or another.

Crowley washed the teacup, put the kettle on, poured himself something from among the less distinguished bottles, examined the circle again, and prowled some more. Afternoon drew into evening. Neon signs, and their puddled reflections, blinked on up and down the streets. Traffic increased. He examined the packages on the sales counter, thinking that he had no business opening them. Opened them. Three copies of a book of poetry; yet another Bible; something in blackletter which he didn’t even try to identify; Edgar Cayce. Passing streetwalkers looked in at the windows. He drew the shades, scowling.

Suppose Aziraphale had wound up discorporated in Heaven, there still had to be a way to get him out, right? He wouldn’t _let_ Gabriel chain him to a desk. He’d_ find_ a way home? Or at least get a message to Crowley? Sure, his boss was a powerful arsehole with lots of powerful angels at his command, but Aziraphale was _Aziraphale_. He was smart, he was tough, he was resourceful, and if all that wasn’t enough - people _wanted_ to help him.

No, _humans and Crowley_ wanted to help him. Gabriel wanted to control him, Dagon wanted to make him suffer for laughs, Michael wanted to keep him out of her war zones, and even that angel that visited that time in Jerusalem, who’d seemed to like him, had said something to Gabriel that got him yanked out of his nice safe niche to wander Eurasia exorcising demon bears and whatnot. No, Aziraphale couldn’t count on Heavenly allies.

Crowley had a brief, vivid vision of sending out a call around England: “Mr. Fell’s in trouble,” and rallying a raging army of drag queens, actors, poets, abuse survivors, single parents, sex workers, mob escapees, displaced persons, bull dykes, confirmed bachelors, overworked service personnel, and the poor and wretched of all stripes to storm Heaven chanting “Give us back our angel;” but Aziraphale would be _furious_ at him for risking his charges. A one-demon commando raid to an unknown destination would be almost as absurd.

He needed intel, dammit.

“I’ve got to do research, don’t I?” He snarled at his second glass of red, and went to the locked cabinet in the back room to drag out the ethereal tomes.

They were heavy, they were dusty, they were bound in decayed leather that crumbled no matter how careful he was, they were in calligraphy or typefaces that he had almost forgotten how to read, they were unindexed, and worst of all, they were written by humans and therefore riddled with speculation, inaccuracy, and downright misinformation. However, they were also heavily annotated by Aziraphale himself, so they weren’t completely useless. Crowley located two that dealt with calling circles and laid them out on the floor of the back room, lying on his stomach to work back and forth between them, making notes on a legal pad while working on his third glass of wine.

“C’mon, c’mon, less about sigils and more about getting a look through ‘em without getting into ‘em,” he muttered in annoyance; and -_ Aziraphale was back!_

His heart leaped for joy, then crashed as he registered how thin and wavering the radiance was, winking fitfully in the glare of the other aura. The front door slammed open, the bell jangling. Crowley jerked himself into snake form faster than he’d done since his banishment from Ireland and slithered into the shadows behind the door to peer through the crack above the hinge.

_“What’ve I told you about warding?”_ Sandalphon roared, dragging Aziraphale in by one arm and hurling him onto the couch beside the calling circle. Crowley barely suppressed a hiss, and calculated the logistics - movement, size, pathway - of striking.

Aziraphale lay where he landed, crumpled upon the couch, which was possibly the most terrifying thing Crowley had ever witnessed. “I, I can’t have angels suddenly appearing in the shop in the middle of a business day, and I can’t expect Heaven to keep track of when it’s a business day in, in my time zone,” he said, in a voice almost too exhausted to be prim. “You know, if you, if you weren’t going to route me through the infirmary, I could have stepped back through the circle straight from the silo. There was no need to go out of your way for me, at all.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job!” Sandalphon loomed over him. “Fifteen angels. _Fifteen angels_ discorporated. But _not_ you. Oh, no, never _you_, perish the thought.“

“I know, it’s dreadful. I hope you’ll say a word to Corporeal Supply on the subject. I know Hylochiel, for one, has been complaining about the durability of later model bodies for millennia, but if an angel in_ your_ position -”

_“You know what I mean!”_

“Oh, honestly, I’d hoped you and Gabriel had _given up_ on that,” Aziraphale moaned. “Would you rather the operation had failed? Every time someone discorporated it set us back. And if I understood correctly, Hylochiel’d put me in a key position _specifically because_ of the body’s durability. I couldn’t let her down. You’d be ever so upset with me now, if I’d let her down.”

“You could have buggered it up a little at the end and not spoiled much,” said Sandalphon. Both his hands were fists. “It’s just _spite_ with you by now, isn’t it? You can’t_ possibly_ prefer living in this _dump_ that reeks of evil - _you aren’t even doing a good job_ \- this whole _neighborhood_ -“

“Is full of people who need my care.” Aziraphale sounded limp and sad and defeated. Crowley slipped through the door in the shadow of a bookcase, eased himself over a stack of commentaries on Nostradamus. “I can’t let _them_ down, either.”

“Better them than Gabriel. You _idiot_. You could be in Heaven, easy hours, hobnobbing with the best; and instead you’re moldering here getting thoroughly up my nose.”

“Lovely as I’m sure it is, being Gabriel’s lapdog, and touched as I am by your eagerness to have me join you in that state, my duty is here and I will not voluntarily turn aside from it.” What should have sounded defiant came out shuddery and weak.

Sandalphon bent over him, aspect to aspect.

Crowley coiled and tested his fangs. If he struck the neck -

“If I hit you,” said Sandalphon, voice dangerously quiet, “one blow, right there -“ he tapped a meaty fist against the bulb of Aziraphale’s nose - “in the state you’re in right now, you’d discorporate. Drive your nose into your brain, snap your neck with the momentum. Not a thing you could do about it.”

“I’m sure that’s true. And I’m, I’m sure the quartermaster would be understanding, when I explained my cause of death to him.”

“You think _I_ can’t handle the_ quartermaster?_”

“I think I can’t stop you from doing anything you wish to do right now.”

_When the elbow draws back, launch. Right on the jugular - you can do this. First time for everything._

“You’re too pathetic to soil my knuckles on,” said Sandalphon, straightening. “So sit here and think about how much easier your life would be if you’d been less stubborn, while your eyes are - Hang on, is that circle still open? Damn carelessness.” He jerked his fist, and the circle faded.

“Hylochiel has been busy,” said Aziraphale. “I’m sure she’d have hung up once she had everything back in order.” His breath wheezed a bit. “Oh, I _hope_ she gets some sort of commendation for this operation. I’m _so_ proud of her.”

“Yeah, and that means a lot to her, I _don’t_ think! I wonder how long it’ll take you to get the eyes back. Be interesting to find out how much of a Guardian you are, with no wings and no eyes. Or - you could trip on something and break that neck after all. Like a sensible angel.”

_No eyes?_

Aziraphale, hidden by the back of the couch, said nothing.

Sandalphon sneered down at him. “Out of smart remarks, are you? Wonders never cease. Have fun recovering. I’m out of here.” He turned on his heel and slammed through the door, charging through a pack of humans, who protested. One of them tried the door, which remained locked, which meant they didn’t need to be here, and they passed on.

Crowley slithered across the floor and shifted back to himself, kneeling by the couch. “Aziraphale?”

The angel’s face was drained and pale, even his eyes, even the pupils; but he somehow managed a Smile. “Hello, my dear. I’m sorry if I worried you.”

“What _happened?_ You look terrible.”

“I’m a little confused on the details,” admitted Aziraphale, “but Hylochiel - you remember her?”

“Worked with me on the stars, got you sent off to do hero-duty when you’d rather be scribing, sure, I remember her.”

“She has those atom bomb things in her territory in, I’m afraid I didn’t catch exactly where, maybe she’s still in the Caucausus? Anyway, apparently some of your lot came poking around and did something that started a, a chain reaction?”

“What, they set off the bombs?”

“I – suppose so? Or, primed them to go off? I haven’t been keeping up with that sort of thing to speak of. Anyway, a great deal of power was due to be released, right on a ley, and since it was caused by demonic activity the injunction not to meddle with human technology didn’t apply, but the amount of force due to be released was more than she could handle on her own, so she did a localized time stop and sent out a general call, and also specifically summoned me.”

“What the hell did she want _you_ for? Are you _blinded_?”

“I can detect light, but essentially, yes. Pray don’t be upset. It’s only till the nerves regenerate. This body is very durable, you know. I believe that was her reason for summoning me. Because the original issue of bodies can handle a great deal of stress, and one of the, I believe three things, she had to do was to send excess energy off to the sun.”

_“You channeled an atomic bomb?”_

“Um, more than one? I think? She had no leisure to explain past the basics, kept stopping and starting time and had one team working on the leys and one team doing something to stop the reactions and one team gathering up energy for me, and angels kept dropping out or discorporating because it was all, all fairly difficult...”

“All right, angel, never mind.” Handling fission and fusion energy had been routine for starmakers, once upon a time. Crowley’d never done it in a body, but he could see how it _might_ be done - in through the locus of power, out through a locus of perception focusing on the destination. He examined Aziraphale’s hands, sunburned and stiff. “In through the hands, up through the arms to the - spine, yeah? To the optic nerve? Bet you’re sore.”

“Less so than you might think. The circle Hylochiel put me seems to have been healing as fast as it could as one of its functions.”

“Yeah, that tracks. You want tea, or Scotch?”

“Yes, please. And could we - I think I’d be more comfortable in the back room.” Aziraphale stirred, trying to rise, and huffed with annoyance as his body, for perhaps the first time since the Flood, refused to cooperate.

“Sure thing. I’ve got you.” Crowley took his hands, and levered him to his feet, glad to feel the familiar solidity intact - he’d been half-afraid that the corporation had worn thin, and he’d be lighter than usual. That not being the case, Crowley didn’t try to lift him, but supported his stiff and stumbling steps to his favorite chair, fetched the tea service and the decanter, and put the cup, piping hot and about half-and-half tea and Scotch, into his hands. “I bet you’re starving, too. What’re you in the mood for?” He put away the books he’d left on the floor.

“Oh, my, now you mention it, I could do with some samosas - or some scones - ooh, or some shrimp fried rice –- or, goodness, anything really. What time is it? I suppose the bakery must be closed by now.”

“Nonsense, the night’s young!” _And nobody in a mile radius would refuse to bring food to this address, regardless, how can you not know that?_ So Crowley called the Indian diner currently occupying the storefront that had housed a succession of new-immigrant-run restaurants for a hundred and sixty years; a bakery that always used the same scone recipe regardless of how often it changed hands; and a Chinese place controlled by a wizened matriarch whom Aziraphale had found wandering lost and returned home with a penny and a sweet when she was three years old.

While awaiting the deliveries, Aziraphale drank tea and Scotch and Crowley did what he could with the damage. Worst was the eyes. The layer of scorched corneal cells came off readily, but the main problem was in the visual nerves, and Crowley did not have the healing skills to do more than supply an improved growth environment. “Sandalphon should have taken you to Raphael,” he declared, giving up in disgust.

“If he’d wanted me to heal, he should have,” said Aziraphale. “But I believe this is intended as my punishment for not discorporating.”

“He wanted to finish you off,” said Crowley, as softly as he could for the rage in his throat. “I’d have killed him, angel. Venom to the jugular, summon hellfire, not a trace left of him.”

“Oh, Crowley, _no_!”

“He’ll _do_ it one of these days! He’s a thug and a bully and he wants to drag you home and lay you at Gabriel’s feet so you’ll never get back where you belong.”

Aziraphale sighed. “I know, I know, but in his heart, he really does believe that what Gabriel wants is always for the greater good. He thinks he’d ultimately be doing me a favor. He doesn’t understand and he doesn’t _want_ to understand and I’m not denying that’s a problem, but it’s _not_ a capital offense.”

“Attempted murder would be. I’m serious, angel, I can’t stand by and watch anybody do that and I don’t care who it is.”

“I understand, but what _you_ need to understand is that if you ever assault someone you’ll have to go through me to do it.”

“Even when they’re hurting you?”

“Yes! _Especially_ then! You’ve never been a fighter - don’t try to turn into one on my account.”

“What - so you think I _couldn’t_ do it?”

“I think you_ shouldn’t._ And _yes_, in Sandalphon’s case, I think you _couldn’t_! He always has his sword handy and he’s always ready to use it. You’re a _thinker_. He’s a _smiter._ Don’t oppose _his_ strength to _your_ weakness.”

Crowley opened his mouth, but was saved from whatever he was about to say by a knock on the back door. “_Blechl,_” he grumped, and opened to find three delivery boys. Aziraphale waved and called them by name as confidently as if he could see them. Crowley overpaid them in accordance with Aziraphale’s custom, spread out the food conveniently for his angel to work back and forth between dishes by touch and smell, and poured more tea, all the while tying up the knowledge that Aziraphale, forced to choose between Sandalphon and Crowley, _still_ believed he should choose Sandalphon, into a manageable knot of pain.

The spread was a big one even by Aziraphale’s standards, and he ate his way steadily through it as Crowley talked about the Obnoxious Tower plan, how the problem was to make it sufficiently obnoxious without making it ugly or boring, because he would, after all, be living in the thing; whereat Aziraphale pointed out that living in it would limit the amount of time he spent looking at it, which Crowley realized was a valid point. Aziraphale’s face and aura both grew brighter as he ate and listened and made the occasional remark; but now the food was all gone and he still only needed a drenching and a torn robe to look as if he’d washed up after the Flood.

Words bubbled half-formed around the knot in Crowley’s chest, as he cleared the cartons and bags and Styrofoam containers away, but Aziraphale didn’t need to deal with his stupid hurt feelings right now. “Any chance of you getting a bit of sleep?”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Aziraphale. “I never have understood the appeal, and I don’t fancy taking the stairs to the flat with my eyes in this state. I suppose I’ll have to rebuild my personal reserve with the gramophone, since I can’t read.”

“I could, I could read to you. If you want. If it isn’t anything with big blocks of text.” Crowley changed out the whiskey for wine, as being more sustainable. He wasn’t sure Aziraphale could survive a hangover right now, and he certainly didn’t have enough strength to sober up. “You’ve done it for me often enough.” Of course, Aziraphale read better than him - eyes processing print of all types effortlessly, voice well-oiled and capable of running all night, never tangling itself up in words or syntax, altering itself effortlessly to differentiate between character voices without resorting to caricature.

“Oh, would you? That would be lovely. Perhaps some poetry?”

“You got a new poetry book in today. Let me go get it.”

He’d left the books stacked by the register, with the poetry, the smallest, on top. Plain dust cover, big letters. “_Homage to Clio_,” he read out, sprawling on the couch and tilting the lampshade to shine away from Aziraphale’s dazzled eyes and onto the page. “W.H. Auden. Seen that name before. He’s one of your queer humans, isn’t he?”

“Oh, yes!” Aziraphale sounded pleased. “A clever boy. Self-conscious, you know, though he may have grown out of that by now. He’s American these days, but I met him here between the wars - not to know well, only in passing. I doubt he’d remember me.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Crowley, riffling the pages. The shapes of the verses looked doable; nothing so big as to get lost in. “I bet he recognized his guardian angel when he met you. Might even turn up in a poem, you don’t know.” He couldn’t have defined “queer,” exactly, but knew it was something about sex, gender, loves that dared not speak their names. Knew people so labeled were Aziraphale’s people, and therefore his. Crowley and Aziraphale, queer angel and queer demon, bound together in ways that could not safely be talked about. “Ready?”

Aziraphale managed a heartrendingly small wiggle. “Yes, please.”

Crowley sounded rough and hesitant to himself at first, and couldn’t always make sense of the line breaks, but Aziraphale made no objection to his going back over a bit in order to parse it properly. The poet was clever, all right - a bit too clever for his own good, sometimes, but Crowley could relate to that, and as sure as he got annoyed at some bit of lyric posturing, along would come a good plain round stanza.

_“Our race would not have gotten far, _  
_Had we not learned to bluff it out _  
_And look more certain than we are _  
_Of what our motion is about-_ Oi, can’t get more human than _that!”_

“Human, yes. Doesn’t describe any demons or angels we know, at _all!_”

The way history kept steadily moving till things and people that had loomed gigantic became obscure in next to no time; a brutal little poem referencing Eden; one about a kitchen; one on the sin of gluttony, of which Auden seemed to approve more than not, which made Aziraphale nodd and smile and discourse on the human confusion of gluttony with appetite. Then a four-line parable about a watch:

_"The watch upon my wrist _  
_Would soon forget that I exist, _  
_If it were not reminded _  
_By days when I forget to wind it_. All right, that’s funny, but I don’t know what it means.”

“I think it’s about not noticing things till you need them.”

“Or maybe he felt a need to round out a page and got silly.”

“Maybe. What’s next?”

“‘The More Loving One.’” The knot in Crowley's chest twinged; he didn’t know why.

_"Looking up at the stars, I know quite well_   
_That, for all they care, I can go to hell,_   
_But on earth indifference is the least_   
_We have to dread from man or beast._

_How should we like it were stars to burn_  
_With a passion for us we could not return_? Gkd  
_If equal affection cannot be,_  
_Let the more, more loving one - be me -”_

Choking, he dropped the book.

_“Crowley -“_

The weak, lost kindness in Aziraphale’s voice almost broke him, and he had no business breaking here. “I don’t know how you can stand to read this pretentious stuff!”

“Really? I don’t know how _you_ can stand to listen to popular music.” A dangerous edge, there.

“What’re, what’re you talking about? Pop’s all good fun, silly stuff, here today, gone tomorrow -“

Aziraphale sat up straight, took a deep breath, looked Crowley straight in the sunglasses with his burnt-out pale blue eyes, and sang, in harmony with himself:  
_I bless the day I found you_  
_I want to stay around you_  
_And so I beg you, let it be me_  
_Don't take this heaven from one_  
_If you must cling to someone_  
_Now and forever, let it be me -_

Although he could normally sing the entirety of “Greensleeves,” with lute, on a single breath, he faltered to a stop, air stuttering in his throat, and closed his eyes.

Crowley tossed off the wine in his glass and set it down with care not to let it make a sound. Thin dirty rain ticked against the windows. “Yeah. I should go.”

“You should not.”

“Angel -“ _It hurts too much, if I stay I’ll do something stupid, something that breaks you, you’re too fragile, let me through the do not cross line, let me hold you, let me keep you safe even though I’m as big a danger to you as Sanadalphon, if Sandalphon had seen me here I couldn’t have moved fast enough, he would have killed you, how can you not see what they’re doing to you, they don’t love you they never did that’s my job and I can’t -_

“We’ve learned many useful things from the humans,” said Aziraphale, sounding stronger now, perhaps bolstered by the familiar structures of lecture mode. “Self-laceration is not among them. They feel so many things, so intensely, _of course_ they occasionally get too on the nose for us when expressing themselves. But they have also provided useful tools for getting out of funks, and I see it’s time to bring out the big guns.”

“You have big guns?”_ For this?_

“The cabinet under the window, with the carved front. Open it, please.”

Crowley sighed and hauled himself off the couch. “All right.” He couldn’t imagine anything in there would improve his own mood, but if it held some panacea for Aziraphale’s ills then he’d read from it till doomsday. “What’s in there? Your porn stash?”

Not porn, no. A motley assortment, thick and thin and short and tall, and he gathered from the range of shades that, if he could see more colors, he’d be seeing a lot of them. One set even named itself a rainbow: _The Blue, The Green, The Yellow Fairy Book_.

What _was_ all this? Crowley read titles out at random. “_Through the Looking Glass? Swallows and Amazons? Now We Are Six? Little Women_? What on earth’s a hobbit?”

“A non-human being who lives in comfortable holes, wears waistcoats, and eats seven meals a day, when possible.”

“So - an entire race of Aziraphales?” He pulled the book out and flipped through it, but the text blocks were bigger than he felt up to coping with.

“Essentially, yes, but the one in question goes on an adventure to rob a dragon with thirteen dwarves and a wizard, which isn’t respectable.”

“I dunno, _I’d_ respect anybody who robbed a dragon, no matter how many dwarfs and wizards they had along.” Crowley turned to look at his angel, wondering how, after all this time, he could still pull out a surprise like this. “When did you start reading children’s books?”

“While you slept. _Alice_ began it. I met the author on that run I made up to the universities right before, you remember? I was, well, I needed diversions around that time and took more trouble to cultivate human acquaintances than I normally do, and since he knew I was a bookseller, he revealed the pseudonym to me, and I read it. Dodgson wrote it for his child friends, who were all highly intellectual little girls, so I perhaps shouldn’t have been surprised at how clever it is. Also - it gave off this, oh, how to describe it? Sometimes, when I hold a book, before I even look inside, it - doesn’t _speak_ exactly - it’s as if - some books almost have an _aura_, a quality that - I feel it in my hands - something that tells me, _This is a work that lives.”_

“Can’t say as I’ve felt any such of a thing, but I can believe you do. Those are the classics, are they?”

“Not, not always. To become a classic a book primarily has to catch the attention, over time, of the, the class of people who can declare that things are classic, and make the designation stick. But the books with this aura reward multiple readings, at least for me. Often for others, too. _Alice_ itself has gone right past classic to byword. Any time a reviewer thinks particularly well of any book for children, I find, the phrase ‘since_ Alice_’ will make its way into the review, even though it’s hard to find ways in which any books _since Alice_ are truly comparable to it. It’s nonsense, you see, a difficult genre to do well.”

Warmth spread through Crowley’s chest and loosened the knot in it as Aziraphale’s voice strengthened, though his hands were too still.

At this point, alas, he pulled himself up, as he did when he thought he was on a conversational vector of more interest to him than to his listener. “Be that as it may. After that I paid more attention to books written for children and I’ve found that, as a class, they have many excellent qualities that are harder to find in works for adults.”

“Like what?” _Never cut yourself off on my account, angel!_

“Well. To begin with. The authors are aware that they’re competing with the entire world for the child’s attention, so they take pains to be as interesting as possible on every page. I enjoy a nice philosophic diversion as much as the next being -“

“More than me, for sure.”

“But sometimes one simply isn’t in the mood. And then the themes tend to be, not simplistic, far from it, but, not, not _personally_ challenging for me. Issues of maturation and development, basic morality, adapting to the society in which one is raised - they’re of vital importance to the target audience, but I am safely at one remove from them. The, the sorts of issues that have distressed _us_ tonight are almost wholly absent.”

“All right, that does sound nice.” He put _The Hobbit_ back where it came from, and pulled out _Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland_.

“The fact that they’re written for growing brains, that are not only more likely to reread than not, but which are almost guaranteed to find new layers of meaning every time they open a favorite work, encourages the authors to supply plenty of matter to work on, and they can be wonderfully subtle about it. That alone is a level of artistry worth seeking out. And in the end - one can find tragedy, and sentimentality is to be had for the asking, but I’ve never yet closed a book intended for the young and felt depressed, or weary, or or anything but invigorated. Reminded, you know, of how wonderful and interesting Earth is. So that cabinet’s become my medicine for melancholy. On nights like this when the years get, get a little _heavy_, something in there is bound to serve as a pick-me-up.”

Certainly this topic was picking the angel up, which endeared the stuff to Crowley off the bat. He paged through the _Alice_ book, which looked readable enough, lots of illustrations and dialog (“..._and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?_”), some interesting typesetting choices. “So you want me to read _Alice_ to you?”

“If you - no, wait! _I_ want to read the_ Alice_ books to _you_ sometime. But anything else that takes your fancy.”

“All right, whatever you like. Give me a minute.” Crowley passed his hands along the spines, seeking the aura Aziraphale’d described. It sounded like the feeling he got from his car. He’d flirted with a lot of cars; had assumed at first that he’d treat them as he did clothes and hairstyles; but nothing else felt like his Bentley. Screw automatic transmissions and tail fins - that car had a _soul._ But these books only felt like books to him. Better get a thin one, to test the waters. This one - no - hmm, possibility - oh. Oh, yes! Good typeface with plenty of room to move around, spot illustrations, and the titular hero bore more than a passing resemblance to Aziraphale.

He carried it to the couch and settled himself, half sitting, with his legs stretched along the seat and his elbow propped on the armrest, leaning toward Aziraphale and the light. “Here we go, then, angel. Let’s see how I do this.”

Aziraphale wiggled, a proper wiggle, turning his faded face and dulled blue eyes toward Crowley and the light. “You will do beautifully, my dear.”

_“Hch._” Crowley swallowed, flexed his jaw, and began to read:

_Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump bump bump..._


	2. The Angel of the Hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meanwhile, back in Heaven, Gabriel has a private chat.
> 
> (You think Aziraphale's the only angel with an abusive work environment? You don't know the Gabriels of this world very well.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hylochiel first appears in "Introduction to Blessing and Thwarting," and came to visit Aziraphale and met the Serpent of Eden in "Senses."
> 
> No real historical events are referenced in this fic.

Hylochiel was about to slip away from the dispersing crowd, back to her apartment in Vilnius, there to consume a pound or so of potato pudding and read fashion magazines till her nerves stopped buzzing, when Gabriel called her name. She froze long enough to restore her modest smile and turned. “Yes, sir?”

He beamed at her. The muscles at the base of her neck coiled up. “If I may speak to you privately for a moment.”

“Of course, sir!” She let him usher her into his office without letting any elements of her self-presentation slip: no wiggle in the walk, no curve in the shoulders, head at a not-proud-but-not-annoyingly-self-deprecating angle. It helped that, tired as it was, this corporation was the most comfortable one she’d had in a long time: curvy and feminine, sturdy and tall. If it was a bit disheveled, well, she’d earned it. Gabriel had just finished saying so, to the assembled multitudes. 

Silly of her to be apprehensive. To brace herself as the door clicked shut. To wish to touch up her lipstick and powder, only a little, only because looking her best was the next best thing to armor, but of course she didn’t _need_ armor in_ Heaven_. Gabriel walked around her to perch on the desk, one perfectly-tailored leg swinging free from the knee propped on the edge.

“So. Heckuva day, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t worry, this is just between the two of us. As far as they’re concerned -“ he made a sweeping gesture, indicating - who? The entire population of Heaven? The agents and staff of Earthly Affairs? Her fellow Guardians? - “today was an unmitigated triumph and you’re the angel of the hour. The rate of discorporation was maybe a _tad_ high, but hey, it was a tough time and you made the hard decisions and they were all happy to do their part. Most angels wouldn’t have managed nearly as well.”

He’d already said all this. “Thank you, sir.” _Tea. I am going to drink so much tea with that potato pudding, I’ll slosh for a week. And then I’ll play the flute till the neighbors complain._

“Except that none of it should’ve been necessary, should it?”

The violet eyes bored into her like drill bits. Hylochiel adjusted her smile as her brain burst into exhausted tears. _Now?_ They were doing this _now?_ Couldn’t he wait a day and send her a memo so she didn’t have to stand here and give the right answers while holding herself exactly right? “No, sir, it shouldn’t.”

“Because you and I both know - if you’d _really_ been paying attention, those demons would never have penetrated so far or done so much damage.”

Thousands of excuses swelled and popped like soapsuds in her mind: _I never got approval to ward the missile sites, they’re hard to monitor without panicking humans, my regular adversary had nothing to do with it, I can’t monitor every rogue demon who decides it wants to play with bombs, it never occurred to me that anybody would want to, it’s impossible to predict everything, the Other Side isn’t one operation it’s millions_ \- “Yes. Sir.”

“Eternal vigilance! Just because you’ve had an easy time of it for a century or so, doesn’t mean you can relax.”

_Easy time_ was not how she’d have characterized the 20th century Lithuanian history she’d lived through, though to be fair direct demonic action had not been a major part of the worst bits, and direct demonic action was always Gabriel’s priority. “No. Sir.”

“You’ll need to take precautions against this happening again. In fact, we’ll need a task force to look into warding the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers against future such assaults.”

“Good idea, sir.” She’d suggested wards herself when she first learned she’d have atom bombs in her field of care; Pirangiel, in Moscow, had seconded her. She seldom saw the American Guardians, but she’d be surprised if they hadn’t, also. 

“Since you did such a _good job_ of containment, and all that star experience means you understand the science side, I’d like you to head that up.”

Oh. _That_ was - _Did_ the star experience subsume all she’d need to know about bombs? Could she _handle_ that kind of responsibility? She’d _have_ to. Wait - “I’d be honored, sir. Does, does that mean, will I still be Guardian for Lithuania?”

“Sure, sure. It’s only a temporary duty, shouldn’t even have to meet up with the other members except once or twice. Uriel will coordinate and you can hash a lot of it out in memos. Your usual duties shouldn’t suffer at all. Get with Uriel on the way out.”

Hylochiel felt potato pudding recede further into her future. But warding nuclear sites from demonic interference was important. She’d have to requisition personnel - they all would - the workings would be huge - and coordinated - when had the ley maps been updated last? “Yes, sir. I’ll be happy to.”

Heaven did not, technically, have air pressure, but something similar shifted, a chime sounded, and a section of wall opened. “Sandalphon!” Gabriel’s face and voice did that thing it only did for Sandalphon - not exactly lighting up (he was already at full brightness), not exactly warming; but whatever it was, Sandalphon’s shoulders relaxed as he strode in even as Hylochiel’s tensed. “Get him dropped off all right? How is the little guy?”

Sandlaphon shrugged. “Oh, you know. _Aziraphale_. Fussy. Chattering. Miffed.”

Miffed? He hadn’t _seemed_ miffed. Not that she’d had time to talk to him, and oh, wouldn’t _that_ be wonderful, to share potato pudding and talk herself down from the whole fiasco while her favorite teacher listened and asked his calm questions that made thinking easier? When all the other angels had been milling around yelling questions and her brain had frozen, he’d taken her by the hand and said: _Put us where you need us, dear, no time to lose._ He’d fortified the circle she’d built around him, took hold of the star conduit she punched open for him and _kept_ it open, though he’d never done star work, and everyone else pulled themselves together around him. 

“Why were you even there?” She asked Sandalphon, but that wasn’t the important question. Aziraphale’d stood quietly inside his circle with his hands out, catching chains of shattering atoms as fast as anyone could shove them his way and shunting them safely into Sol’s heart, while she directed the workings, all her focus on the vectors and invocations and competing spiritual and physical matter-energy dynamics, and angels kept discorporating from tiny mistakes, and then suddenly it was over, they’d done it, the humans not even alerted and all the equipment back where it belonged, only some of the bomb-shaped things were duds now, and the circles had lapsed one by one, and then Aziraphale, pink and shaky and his eyes, something had been _wrong_ with his eyes, had leaned against a wall: _Goodness, I think I know how electrical wires feel, now!_

She’d laughed and reached out her hand and then Sandalphon had whisked him away - “Is he in the infirmary? I’ll go see him, if Raphael’s done with him, I want to thank him -“

“Eh, better leave it alone,” said Gabriel. “You know he doesn’t like to be disturbed. I was a bit shocked when I realized you’d summoned him.”

“As far as I know he has the only star-rated corporation left in operation,” said Hylochiel, her conscience twinging. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have. He understands that - doesn’t he?”

“Oh, I reckon he does,” said Sandalphon. “Doesn’t mean he_ likes_ it. Not that he’d ever say so, not straight out. I could tell it spoiled his whole day, though.”

Gabriel chuckled, smiling the indulgent smile that belonged only to conversations about, and presumably with, Aziraphale. (It must be nice for Aziraphale, to have one of Gabriel’s better smiles, all for himself.) “I expect it’s hard for someone who’s kept the Serpent of Eden so well in hand for so long to understand how _somebody else_ allowed demons to make such a big mess right under her nose, but I’m sure he’ll get over it.”

Would he still be Gabriel’s favorite, if she told what she knew?

“I should at least send him a thank-you note. I hope...” This was important, go for it, now of all times Gabriel had to listen. “I hope Corporeal Supply will finally resume manufacture of the original style bodies. The Guardians for the nuclear powers, at least, clearly need star-rated corporations.”

“It sure seems like time to revisit that, doesn’t it?” Gabriel’s face moved into his dismissal smile, _oh at last thank goodness_, and he picked up a clipboard from his desk. “Well, we won’t keep you any longer. Get with Uriel and then you can go home and think about what went wrong today, how to prevent the same thing from going wrong again, and you’ll do better next time.”

Hylochiel got out the door, closed it behind her, and checked the hall to ensure she was unobserved before relaxing her posture, leaning against a wall, and working through her routine for releasing stress in snatched minutes. Deep breaths, muscle stretching, pulling out her compact, repairing her face armor, touching up her hair. 

_If I had the Serpent of Eden besotted with me I probably wouldn’t have to deal with rogue demons in my nuclear piles, either._

She had spent so long not saying it, every time the Guardian of the Eastern Gate’s track record got trotted out to show everybody else how incompetent they were at thwarting, that she never could say it, now, even if it weren’t a low, ungrateful thing to say about someone without whom her field of care would be a poisonous wasteland this minute. She was a _horrible_ angel for even _thinking_ about saying it.

Besides, she didn’t _know_ that Aziraphale’s adversary was still in love with him, after all these centuries.

Except that who, once they started loving Aziraphale, would ever stop? 

Two sentences and one hand clasp and a missile silo full of that radiant delight, that sense of: _There you are, how lovely to see you, isn’t it wonderful that you exist?_ All angels radiated love, more or less; but they all did it in their own way, and not all those ways were comfortable. Aziraphale’s way was _beyond_ comfortable, demanding nothing, assuming that who you were was who you were supposed to be and that whoever you were, however many mistakes you made, you were still good enough.

_That_ was why her operation had fallen into place around him; no one could panic wrapped in that feeling. _That_ was why, every time they were called to a new seminar, the Guardians he’d taught hoped against all reason that he might show up this time. _That_ was why the Serpent of Eden had made heart eyes at him in a wineshop in Jerusalem, and why no other angel could deal with him. _That_, no doubt, was why he was Gabriel’s favorite, quite apart from the sheer competence over time that would endear anyone to their boss. And_ that_ would be why Sandalphon had appeared to yank Aziraphale out the moment the crisis ended. Gabriel, realizing the seriousness of the situation, would have made sure he got checked out right away. Aziraphale _rated_ special treatment. _Nobody_ could resent that.

She should go to the infirmary, ask Raphael to ask him, if he was up to it, if he wanted to see her.

What if he _didn’t_ want to, though?

Because Gabriel had made it clear that no one was to drop in on Aziraphale, the way she had done in Jerusalem, without clearing it through Head Office and making an appointment. That he had important things to do and couldn’t spend all his time giving advice and handholding less experienced Guardians (i.e., all of them). This made sense, because the same quality that made angels want to see him made it hard for him to refuse them. Only Hylochiel knew that he had a secret and a unique burden to bear and to protect, as well. That wouldn’t be a factor in the infirmary, but - 

But what if she’d disappointed him? What if, when he saw her this time, having realized that her failure of adversary management had created the crisis he had (be real, here) essentially solved for her, it _wasn’t_ lovely to see her anymore? Because even Aziraphale could tell that she was _not_, in fact, good enough?

Better not risk it. One more job and then potato pudding, tea, fashion magazines, flute. Rest. Safety.

Hylochiel restored her posture and headed down the hall to the Deputy Head’s office, to find out how much work coordinating on putting together a task force would entail today. 

At least Uriel would not be, on her own, especially exhausting.

-30-


End file.
